| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Mark E. Neely, Jr. The Union Divided: Party Conflict in the Civil War North. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2002. Pp. xi, 257. $24.95.

In this insightful and thought-provoking book, Mark E. Neely, Jr., challenges the widely held belief that the persistence of a two-party political system in the North during the Civil War helped bring about the Union victory. The argument that party competition invigorated the North, while a lack of partisan rivalry hurt the South, was made famous by Eric L. McKitrick in 1967. The many historians who have subsequently propounded this "two-party thesis" argue that party competition aided the Union by helping to draw talented men into government, giving state political leaders an incentive to cooperate with the federal government due to their mutual desire to promote party success, and keeping the opposition responsible and manageable by forcing it to present an alternative set of policies to those pursued by the party in power. Neely finds none of these arguments persuasive. He contends instead that political parties did real harm to the Union cause. "The party system itself," he concludes, "made no marked contribution to Union victory" (p. 201).

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